Here’s the link to the Weekend Writing Warriors central page, so you can visit all the participants sharing excerpts today…a fun way to sample new books and find new authors! (Also welcome to the Sunday Snippet visitors!)

Sharing from my second scifi romance gladiator novel RENNYR.

The excerpt: Rennyr’s in solitary confinement in “the pit” for refusing to fight again after the death match (where he did manage to save a number of lives, at least temporarily). May be edited from published edition. Follows on directly from where I stopped last week. Gibbz is explaining his past, when he’d made it to the elite gladiator leagues in the Five Systems and why he’s helping Rennyr.

“First time I was in the imperial arena, just my luck it was a death match day and I was the designated easy meat to let a younger guy shine. I wasn’t going down easy so two of his buddies were sent in to help him. That’s when the Death Dealer saved my life. He was going across the sand to rejoin his own team and he took a detour to help me. Took out all three of those bastards as easy as you please, didn’t even break a sweat, didn’t say a word, just moved on and left me on the sand for the medics. We wasn’t from the same House, you see. I never fought again, tried to hang on as a trainer after my injuries healed but no one knew me and eventually I ended up back here. I give Westklin credit, he does hire ex-fighters. Course the job is nothing to brag about but hey, it’s credits and keeps me in the arenas.”

“I don’t understand though, how another man saving your life means you feel you have to help me,” Rennyr said. “I’m grateful but—”

Voice lowered as if sharing a secret, the other said, “The Death Dealer is like you. One of your kind. Never saw anyone else like him till the day I laid eyes on you.”

Heart beating faster, Rennyr could only stutter. “Like—like me? A Badari?” Could there be another pack brother out here? The Khagrish security guards had smuggled him out and sold him easily enough apparently so perhaps it had been done before.

“Never heard the term before. He was as big as you and he’s got those claws and the big fucking fangs that come and go, and word is he heals like magic. Just like you did. It’s what makes him so hard to kill. You guys could be brothers.”

VS: So of course Rennyr is full of questions, which we’ll get to next week.

RENNYR (BADARI GLADIATORS SERIES BOOK 2) by Veronica Scott

Rennyr was a genetically engineered senior soldier in his Badari Warrior pack until one day he woke up on a strange planet naked, disoriented and about to be sold into the gladiator arena for the rest of his life. Unscrupulous guards faked his death in the lab where he was created and sold him into slavery in the galaxy’s hinterlands. Kill or be killed is the rule in his new life and a Badari never gives up. He’ll fight to stay alive until the Badari goddess sees fit to decree his death and release him from the wretched existence.

Jaine Mitchel of the Sectors was on her way to an exciting research internship until pirates seized the spaceship on which she was a passenger and took her to feature in a gladiator ‘death match’ in the galactic hinterlands. She has no hope of surviving in the arena until a man she only glimpsed in passing breaks out of his cell and saves her life, declaring her to be his fated mate. Given to Rennyr as his reward for winning the death match, Jaine must share a cell and a bed with the handsome, not human, gladiator and together they have to find a way to survive in this merciless world of violence and death. Their mutual attraction is off the charts. Falling in love is the easy part, finding a way to escape or even to remain together is the challenge. At any time their mutual owner could decide thumbs up or thumbs down on one or both of them, or sell them separately.

Their only hope is a mysterious gladiator master from offworld who may be coming to buy Rennyr. Will he take Jaine as well? Could Rennyr win freedom for them both if he does well enough in the arena? Badari Warriors claim their mates for life and Rennyr has no intention of losing Jaine…RENNYR is an 80K word novel and can be read as a standalone. KYDEN is the first book in the series.

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